Like a creature that occasionally crawls out from under a rock to disturb everything and everyone, Dick Cheney shows up only when he has something negative to say, or when he has something to sell. Usually it’s both.

Cheney showed up on Fox News Sunday on September 6 to promote his new book, Exceptionalism, and to talk about how bad he thinks the nuclear deal with Iran is. Even in the friendly confines of Fox News, things didn’t go as well as he might have expected, when host Chris Wallace reminded Cheney that Iran’s nuclear program began while he was vice president. But Cheney wasn’t finished there; the anti-Iran deal road show continues.

Cheney is addressing a luncheon meeting of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) today, where he will continue to attack the Iran deal. An advance copy of his remarks appears on the AEI website. Of course there’s the usual fear mongering:

“Along with a pathway to a nuclear arsenal, President Obama’s agreement will provide Iran with funds and weapons the regime will use for the support of terror, the dominance of the Middle East, and the furtherance of Tehran’s efforts to destroy Israel, threaten Arab regimes, and prevent the United States from defending our allies and our interests in the Persian Gulf and beyond. With the removal of restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program, this agreement will give Iran the means to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland.”

Of course, he won’t mention whose administration was responsible for making Iran the dominant power in the Middle East, with the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the consequent crumbling of Iraq.

If you were expecting this speech to be level-headed and rational, you must have forgotten what Dick Cheney is like. “I know of no nation in history that has agreed to guarantee that the means of its own destruction will be in the hands of another nation, particularly one that is hostile,” Cheney says.

But if a former Vice President of the United States says this is a bad deal, we should listen, right? Not when that former vice president is Richard B. Cheney. Because when it comes to foreign affairs, Dick Cheney is almost always wrong.

Steve Chapman, writing in the Chicago Tribune, highlighted the major things Cheney got wrong about Iraq in a 2011 editorial. Chapman wrote:

“He said Saddam Hussein had ‘reconstituted nuclear weapons.’ He said Saddam was working with al-Qaida. He predicted U.S. troops occupying Iraq would be ‘greeted as liberators.’ Six months in to the occupation, after things went bad, he said there was nothing wrong with our postwar strategy. In 2005, he said the Iraqi insurgency was ‘in its last throes.’

If Dick Cheney were a student, he would have flunked the course. But he’s proof that if you rise high enough, some people will listen to you no matter how many times you prove your stupidity and dishonesty.

Chapman’s last sentence explains the essence of Dick Cheney. Wrong on almost everything, but considered an “expert” by many.

The White House is fighting back against Cheney’s anti-Iran deal campaign. A short YouTube video called “Vice President Dick Cheney: Wrong Then, Wrong Now” highlights the lies, distortions, and utter idiocy of what Cheney said about the Iraq War. At the end of the video there is a link to “get the facts” about the Iran deal.

If history is any guide, we now know for certain that the nuclear deal with Iran is a good deal for the United States, because Dick Cheney opposes it.

Author: Wes WilliamsWes Williams is a lifelong political junkie, stuck in the red end of blue Delaware, where he lives near the beaches with his wife of 33 years and three cats. While politics of all sorts are his passion, he is particularly interested in issues involving labor, education, and the justice system.
Follow Wes on Twitter at @WesWilliams_AI or on his Facebook page, LeftOfLiberal.